Author: phil

Recently I watched the incredibly long, 2-part, sales pitch from Rich Schefren over at Strategic Profits. Supposedly Rich is a ‘guru’s guru’ (when it comes to internet marketing I guess, not as in a spiritual guru).

So, I made it through the pitch and I have to say there were some things I found interesting. Perhaps even interesting enough for me to join Rich’s personalized training program and see what it could do to enhance Filmamora.com’s sales and profits.

But I had some questions. Principally, had Rich (or his ‘team’) ever dealt with a non-English language focused business. 90% of our customers are Spanish (not surprising, being based in Spain!) and obviously our marketing had to be in Spanish and had to tackle a Spanish approach. Despite what you may have heard, marketing in a different language and country is not just a matter of translating your materials.

So it seemed a valid question.

Now, like almost all of these internet marketing people, getting ahold of them is almost impossible. They want you to buy their product, not waste their time with pre-sales questions. Rich’s company, Strategic Profits, has a support website where you can fill out tickets. So I did. Many days ago. I can log in and look at the ticket progress (none). There is no email address. No way to reach them!

In ‘traditional’ business we focus on getting the customer (and keeping them happy once you have them). I have noticed this trend in online marketing to ‘here’s what we have, like it and buy it or go away’. To them it seems to be all about the sizzle, building anticipation and urgency. That is why they are all in the internet marketing space, and what they sell are courses about internet marketing. It is an incestuous business, creating more people to market competing products.

Or at least that is how it looks from out here.

But the tools are not without merit. And I think that they can be applied to a ‘real’ business… But if you have no interest in answering questions in order to get my money, how interested will you be in answering questions once you’ve got it!

One of my pet peeves is when I get emails from ‘Internet Marketing Gurus’ who claim that when I buy their course I will get all these ‘bonuses’ at greatly reduced prices.

Here are some recent ones:

Bonus #1: 1 Ticket To “GURU Traffic School”: VALUE: $2,500

Bonus #2: 1 Ticket To Any Live Event In 2010: VALUE: $5,000

You get the idea.

Newsflash

These courses are worth what people will pay for them. So – if you are giving them away for free, they are worth nothing. If you are selling something for $97 then it is worth, oh, I don’t know… $97? Not $2000 and we get 95% off.

And what is even more annoying that people doing this is people believing it! We have arrived at the point where pretty much we cannot believe anything that comes through our email – thanks in large part to idiots who make offers like this.

If you have read other articles by me you know I hate the whole ‘make a million online’ movement. It is – to be blunt – bullshit. Anyone who has done it could probably have made a million anywhere. They had a great business idea and spent thousands of hours perfecting it and their presentation. They did not buy a domain name, set up a wordpress blog, outsource to an article writer and collect a 7 figure sum.

I would challenge any of these gurus to prove

1. they have in fact ever made the money they claim. A tax return would be nice proof!
2. that any money can be made doing anything except selling the idea of easy money to desperate people
3. that anyone who has bought their product went from zero to hero directly because of it

Anyway, rant over.

Welcome to my blog where I will never sell you anything… though if you live in Spain you might want to sign up for FilmAmora.com – the best way to rent movies in Spain!